Christmas at Jimmie's Children's Unit (12 page)

Yet he owed Kate something.

‘Cup of coffee?’ he suggested. ‘Once you’ve got him hooked up back in the PICU?’

‘Where?’ she asked.

He glanced at his watch. It was after five, the day had got away from him.

‘If you’re knocking off, let’s make it Scoozi’s. Hamish has a playdate with a kindy friend so won’t be home until late. Besides, he and Juanita are used to expecting me when they see me.’

She nodded but he sensed she wasn’t overjoyed by the idea. She’d been avoiding him—he’d figured that out quickly enough—but why? Embarrassment over what had happened Friday night? Or avoidance so there’d be no chance of it ever happening again?

His body didn’t like that idea, not one little bit. Kate Armstrong had excited it in ways he’d never felt before and he’d hoped she’d enjoyed the experience enough to want to continue it.

He reached the restaurant first and chose a table in the outdoor garden section. A pergola overhead shaded the area from the worst of the day’s sun so it was pleasantly cool, and he sipped his coffee and found his body not only relaxing, but stirring at the thought of seeing Kate in private—or more or less private, at least not at the hospital.

‘Is there nothing we can do for that baby?’

So much for his body stirring! But he didn’t have to answer straightaway, did he? He stood and moved to pull out her chair.

‘Sit down, relax. Do you want a coffee or a drink—a glass of wine, maybe? I know they have that white you liked.’

She stared at him as if he’d gone demented, then her lovely lips clamped together in a thin line.

‘You know that because you and Clare ate here last Friday night, I assume, and no, I didn’t come for a drink, but for you to talk about that baby. Isn’t that why you asked me?’

Kate heard the words come flying out before she could prevent them. What was wrong with her? Here she was, meeting Angus at
his
invitation, and she was carrying on like a shrew.

‘Sit,’ Angus said, but gently this time, his hand offering just the slightest downward pressure to her shoulder.

Damn him! Just one touch and she was jelly! Angry jelly, although she knew full well the anger was irrational. She slumped down into the chair.

‘Coffee or wine?’

His repetition of the offer made her shake her head, but maybe a glass of wine would help her through whatever lay ahead.

‘Wine, please.’

He gave her order to a waiter and settled back in his chair, reaching out across the table to grasp her hands.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I sensed you needed to talk about the baby, but we need to talk about other things, as well, Kate. I came over to see you on Sunday afternoon when Hamish was asleep but you weren’t there, and at work, well, I—’

‘Like to keep things professional,’ she finished for him. ‘I did guess that.’

‘But do you understand it?’

Did she? Kate thought about it, pleased her wine had arrived so she could take a sip and put off replying for a moment.

‘To a certain extent, but as most doctors and nurses end up in relationships with other doctors and nurses, it’s usually obvious what’s going on around the place. In our unit alone there’ve been seven relationships that I know of, and it’s only been set up a couple of years.’

He shrugged, the movement of his shoulders reminding her how the skin on those shoulders had felt, reminding her of too many things.

‘It happens, but for me it’s easier to keep things more—’

‘Compartmentalised?’ Kate offered the guess she’d already made about this man.

‘I suppose so,’ he admitted, then he stared off into space and she knew he was either thinking of some excuse for this behaviour, or wondering if he’d tell her the real reason.

‘Back when Jenna died,’ he finally began, and she knew he’d come down on the side of the latter. She also felt a tiny surge of happiness that he was opening the crack in that particular box just a little wider. ‘We’d both been working at the hospital, so everyone knew us—knew us as a pair.’

He paused, his eyes once again on the greenery on the far side of the garden area.

‘I had to keep working there—I had a fellowship, studying under one of the best paediatric cardiac surgeons in the business.’ He turned back to Kate, dark eyes pleading for something—understanding?

‘It was terrible, Kate. I could cope, just, with Jenna’s death. I knew I had to come to terms with it and that in time I would, but the sympathy, the commiserations, of the staff around me—everyone knowing and wanting to help—it made it so much harder.’

‘So from then on you shut yourself into a box called Work and thought that would shield you from emotion? Did you never think that maybe having people around you who knew you both might be a good thing? That their empathy and understanding and friendship and even love might have helped you through that time, even if it was only in giving you something to kick against?’

He stared at her, frowning slightly.

‘I didn’t see it that way,’ he finally replied. ‘And I still don’t see it as shutting myself away in a box. I’m trying to explain that, at the time, it grated on me and I decided that I wouldn’t mix my professional and private lives ever again.’

‘Until you went to bed with me last Friday night!’ Kate reminded him, making him frown even harder.

‘But can’t we keep that separate? Does everyone have to know?’

Kate shook her head, a sadness she didn’t understand riffling through her senses.

‘“Everyone” being hospital staff, or “everyone” being them plus Hamish and Juanita? Just how private a box do you want this relationship to be in?’

He threw up his hands.

‘How do I know? You started the box thing—I don’t see it like that at all!’

If he’d argued that he just wanted to keep things quiet at work, Kate knew she might have had a hope of a reasonable relationship with the man she loved, but he’d not answered the Hamish question, which hurt her more than she could say.

‘Don’t you?’ she said. ‘Okay, enough of boxes. I don’t like them anyway. I like my world to be in circles, overlapping rings that encompass all I do and all the people I love. So tell me about the baby. You feel there’s no hope?’

Angus stared at her, seeing the pale oval of her face against the richness of her hair—curling wildly again.

‘Angus?’

Had he been silent too long? What had she asked while he’d tried to analyse a very nasty constriction in his gut? The baby!

‘I’ll discuss it with Alex—in fact, I’m seeing him this evening before he flies to Melbourne for a conference. But I think the best we can do is list the baby for a heart transplant and hope that one becomes available while he’s still well enough to survive an operation.’

‘Poor kid—poor parents. Did you speak to them?’

Angus shook his head.

‘Not until I’ve spoken with Alex so we can present them with all the information and options—however limited those might be. I’ve not been here long enough to know the ins and outs of the transplant listing system, how long a donor waiting list might be, how cases are prioritised.’

He might have been talking work but as he watched Kate lift her wineglass and drain the last mouthful, he couldn’t help looking at her lips, thinking of the magic they’d wrought on his body such a short time ago.

Would he ever taste them again?

He wanted to ask, to find out how she felt about continuing a relationship with him, but what could he say? Can we have sex again?

Of course he couldn’t.

‘This is ridiculous,’ he finally blurted out. ‘I’m nearly forty years of age, sitting with a woman to whom I am incredibly attracted, and I don’t know how to ask her if we’ve got anything going between us.’

Kate stared at him, then smiled and shook her head.

‘Perhaps you should have got out a bit more and learnt a little about the way of the world.’ She paused and
the smile slid off her face. ‘Yes, we’ve got something going between us, Angus. It’s called attraction—a very strong attraction—strong enough for us to end up in bed together last Friday night. I’ve had a few days to think about it and, believe me, I did a lot of thinking. But I’ve always known that relationships that are simply for sex are not for me. I know they work for some people, but as far as I’m concerned, apart from the purely physical release, there’s no fulfilment in them.’

Anger filtered into his head but he squashed it down. He wanted this woman in ways he didn’t fully understand, and although so far in this conversation he’d done nothing more than turn her off him, he was determined to make a reasonable argument.

‘You’re making a judgement call on our relationship before we’ve even got to know each other properly. I won’t accept it’s just for sex. I like you, and I’d like to see more of you out of hospital hours. Are you afraid of what might happen? Are you afraid it might turn into a deeper relationship than you can handle? Is that why you’re dodging it?’

‘
I’m
dodging it? That’s a laugh!

But although she’d snapped the argument at him, Kate knew he was right. Of course that was why she was dodging it. Because at the end, whatever happened, it wasn’t going to lead to the family she had craved for so long.

So instead, she’d forgo any pleasure the relationship could provide? What if a grandfather for her grandchildren
never
came along?

‘I don’t know,’ she finally admitted, her head and heart so at war with each other she felt exhausted.

‘“I don’t know” will do me for the moment,’ Angus said, his tone exultant. ‘Now, I’m meeting Alex at his house so I’ll walk you home through the park. You are going home?’

She nodded, though walking home through the park was the last thing she wanted to do. The park was special to her, a favourite place, and she didn’t want it tainted by the uneasiness she was feeling with Angus.

‘You said the house where you live had been your family home, so you grew up with the park as a playground?’

Had he read her thoughts? They were on the path that led directly across it towards the street where they lived. It ran under spreading poinciana trees, already in bud, some showing the beginnings of the red-andgold flowers that would shortly make a vibrant canopy overhead.

‘We moved there after Susie died,’ she said, not exactly answering his question.

She thought about it some more, then honesty propelled further explanation.

‘Yes, I loved the park. I escaped to it as often as I could.’

‘Escaped?’

She stopped by a sundial in the centre of a small piazza where several paths converged.

‘You of all people would know that grief doesn’t go away just because you move house,’ she said. ‘It came with us, and it haunted my parents’ lives, so yes, I escaped to it. The park was light and sunny and even in the shadows it was warm.’

Angus felt a tension in his chest as he imagined the child Kate had been, alone with grieving parents, using the park as an escape from the darkness grief brought in its train.

Was
his
grief haunting Hamish?

He took Kate in his arms and kissed her gently on the lips, then simply held her, trying to work out the upheaval going on in his mind. He’d always put down the gap between himself and Hamish to Hamish’s resemblance to his mother, but had he deliberately shut himself off from his child, as well as his colleagues?

Was Kate right about his behaviour, about his shutting himself away?

He’d have to think about it later, because right now the woman in his arms, held lightly but still held, was more important.

‘Are your parents both dead now?’ he asked, and she looked up at him and nodded.

‘My mother died when I was eighteen. She’d been ill for a long time, or so it seemed. My father died three years ago. That’s when I moved out of the house.’

‘And you had no-one?’

She moved out of his embrace.

‘Not really. I had someone after my mother died,’ she said. ‘Although probably no-one would have been better.’

The words weren’t bitter but they had a hint of tartness in them, then suddenly she smiled, a proper smile, a ‘Kate smile.’

‘Didn’t I tell you once not to make me maudlin! I had, and still have, a group of wonderful friends. I’ve had a great life and intend to continue enjoying it. Okay, so it
had its share of bumps but all lives have their bumps. You have to live with that so you can enjoy the smooth bits all the more because of them.’

She marched off down the path so he had to hurry to catch up with her. There was more—he sensed that—more about the ‘no-one’ she’d probably have been better without. Not her father. A man, no doubt! No wonder she was wary about a relationship with him.

But wasn’t he just as wary?

Wanting to keep it quiet?

Wasn’t that unfair?

Belittling her some way?

He rubbed his hands through his hair, aware his mind was more confused than it had ever been.
His
mind, the mind he prided himself could work through any problem.

They walked in silence, crossing the road together, then parting without farewells, he to see Alex in the house further down the street, she to disappear into her house.

‘So
that
has done a lot of good!’ he muttered to himself as he walked through Alex’s front gate.

‘Talking to yourself, Angus?’

He looked up to see Alex’s wife, Annie, heavily pregnant with their second child and positively radiant, cutting roses in the front garden.

And in his mind’s eye he saw not Jenna but a pregnant Kate, and the image shocked him so much he stopped as if he’d hit a telegraph pole.

‘Incipient madness!’ he said to Annie.

‘Comes with the job, I think,’ she said sympathetically. ‘Go on in, I think Alex is doing something about cold drinks.’

In a corner of the big living room a toddler played with coloured blocks, knocking over the towers Alex was building for him, then gnawing at random blocks.

‘He’s teething,’ Alex explained, standing up to greet Angus. ‘But then they always are, it seems. You’d know about it.’

Another stab of guilt.
Had
he known much about Hamish’s developmental milestones? He supposed his mother had told him when teeth came through, and he’d dutifully admired them, but as a father?